The Game: Of A Mad King and A Little Prince
by Liast
Summary: It started with a mad king and a little prince. It was more than destryoing towers, killing monsters, or slaughterIng enemies. It was not only about winning or losing. There were stories behind. But it was just a game.


**Disclaimer: Mobile Legends: Bang Bang by Moonton.**

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"I love you."

She said. It took so much courage for her to say that than she needed when she killed for the first time. It was so vivid in her memory. Her first kill that is. How she tried to dogde the deadly magic cards of a boy. How her arrows shot through his body after hesitated just for a second. How the guilt rooted deep down on her heart as soon as she saw his unmoving body, laid on the ground while the crowd cheered at her.

It eased a little when she saw him a mere minute after that, perfectly fine with no injury, slaying a forest monster with such a haste across from where she hid in the bushes. He was just a boy, but a bright and brilliant mage nonetheles. Later, she learned that his name was Harley. No hard feeling upon them, because after that, they killed each other quite frequently in the game.

The game. What a twisted game indeed.

It started with a little prince.

A very beloved and humble prince of the Land of Dawn. A prince that dreamed of a peaceful kingdom more than conquering the world like his courageous father wanted. A child prodigy who liked to play a game of chess againts the commander of war as he dreaded the day he will became one himself. A boy with little golden crown on his head, forced to watch as prisoners of war was executed in a form of a death game, for he will became the king that order them later, while the citizen roared in ectasy every time a body fell to the ground.

So the prince begged.

He begged for the first and the last time in his life. He begged his king, his father, for a peaceful kingdom.

"I don't want to see that. Please Father, please, don't let them die. Please."

But it was a tradition, a sacred law of the Land of Dawn. The first time being some hundred years ago, before the kind-hearted prince was even born. And it will be held some hundred years later, even after the death of the dearly missed prince.

The next game began. There was an empty seat beside the king. The prince did not come.

The next day, the kingdom mourned for the little prince. There was a big funeral to buried a little coffin.

Some said it was a curse, from a vengeful demon with dark magic on her fingers, who chanted with a mouthful of blood for the prince to die a horrible death as she was dying in her sealed prison.

Some said it was an assassin, a dark elf from a far away land, who was sent to end the line of the most powerful kingdom to ever stand. For the king is a faithful man, who believed in his promise to conquered the world for his only son to rule, as he was loyal to his only wife, the queen who died two years ago.

Some said it was an illness, the same one that claimed his mother, the queen, who left behind a depressed king with a child that could not even stomach to watch a tradition of mass execution of prisoners.

Some said it was a suicide, for the prince had a too pure heart in this wrecked kingdom that was expanding through a rain full of blood and smell of burnt meats, with its people that watched execution as entertainment.

Then, the courageous king became the mad king.

Because what a God of War would do if there was no war to be fought anymore?

With his power, he made what his only child wanted to be reality. As he made the prisoner played the death game, again and again and again, without really being dead. As they died, they will lived again. Over and over. Just to kept the sacred law and his son's pleas to be done. As a king and a father would do for his kingdom and his child.

That was written on the books in the village's little library.

A village of prisoners that was punished to play the game and entertained the citizens of Land of Dawn. Some with sinful things in their heart, and some with enough bad luck and many enemies in their life to landed them here, to play the game. Like her.

There was a girl down the hill, with a magic staff and a little sword on her sheath. Sang a song like she was being in love for the first time.

She no longer saw the girl beetwen the trees anymore when she remembered that song. A song that she created herself, she said. She remembered now. That was why the song sounded familiar. She was in her team for a couple of times, enough to know her name and her song that she sang while in the game. But not enough to spare her lives in the game when they played on the opposite of each other.

"Did you hear me? I said-"

"I heard you." Came his soft reply.

She stopped. Waiting for another 'I love you' from him. But it never came. She turned her head toward him. He was a man with the eyes as blue as the sunny sky of a kingdom that was once her home. He looks at the forest below them. A forest full of trees that caged them in this little village, far away from the palace, but near enough to make the prisoner stayed there.

"I heard you perfectly." He said. "It's just… not right."

"What is?" She asked, uncertainly.

"Us. Me."

"What do you mean?"

"I would never be the one that could make you happy." He sounded defeated. So far from the commanding tone that he used when he was in the game.

"But you are."

"No. You don't understand." He said it so quick that she thought he was already practicing it every day. So quick that she thought the words was on his mouth, just on the tip of his tongue, ready to spoilled every times he opened his lips.

"So make me."

"It would never work. This, something that we have, this, this thing beetwen us. It would never," he took a deep breath. He looked at her with such sad eyes that he never showed to others before. "It would never work."

"You don't know that." She said in a voice that so soft, trying to shooth him, or herself, she did not know.

"You will regret this in the end. You'll regret it just like when you bought that shoes last week, but regreted them later that evening." Oh, he knew that she bought new shoes. Must be that little Chang'e and Zilong. No wonder. "Because I am not perfect. Even as a demon hunter, I have demons of my own."

"Then don't joke about us."

"I'm not joking. Don't you understand?" He took a deep breath once again. "I don't want you to regret being with me. There will never be any perfect future for us."

"Then don't make me regret you. And no. No, I'm not saying perfect exists in this life. But we'll only know for certain if we try."

He looked away from her prying eyes. So she did the same.

It was summer. She could feel a small breeze on her skin. Just enough to cool their place on top of the hill, made the air a little bit like the summer in her kingdom. Oh, how she missed that place.

How she missed the kingdom full of people that she loves.

"Every time," he said after a while. "Every time we were together, I was so afraid. When we went there to wait. When suddenly we get called by the guard, to play a game, they said. Ten people, five each team. Guard the towers, kill the monsters, kill the enemies, destroy the enemy's towers. One day they were my teammates, I protected them, I fought with them. But the next day, they were my enemies. And I killed them.

"The enemies. The enemies that live in the same place as me, eat together, hang around with each other. I even killed you. And in the end, we found our way back here, with no bruises or cuts, as if we did not just died a couple times, while a new game began, one that every one has been waiting for."

"You didn't really killed me."

"What? Because it's just in the game? Because you're still alive even when I killed you over and over again there? That damn cursed place. That's not the point."

"We don't have a choice but to play this game."

" _I_ have a choice." He said forcefully. "I could choose to pretend to fight you and then let you kill me. I could choose to surrender. I could choose to just stand still and do nothing. That was so easy."

"But you never did that. Because you are a fighter."

"And yet, I can't even fight the battle that I should have fight. I'm just a selfish human that killed you for my freedom."

There was many things that she wanted to say to him. To deny him.

But it was true. Everything that he said was true. They were selfish, every one of them. Winning meant awards, while losing meant more punishment. If in a year a prisoner had lost more than half the times, they would be executed by the king himself. If prisoner had win a thousand times in the game, then a freedom shall be upon them. Nobody ever got that far.

He was silent for a while. When he talked, his voice was so soft like he's whispering to her. It was the first time for him to be so open to her. She wished he would do that more often, being open with her that was. Just to show her that deep down in his strong heart, there was a part of him that made him human and not the killer that he saw in himself. He was so vulnerable, far from the strong demon hunter that he was, far from the fighter that she always looked up to.

"I have a dream last night, you know."

"What were you dreaming?"

"Us." He stopped to take a deep breath. "I dreamed that one day we were living together, you and I, in a house that was so high up on the hill, because you love the sky so much that you don't want anything to block your view of it. We were eating breakfast that you cooked, on a table, just the two of us. We made a plan for that day, it was kind of a date day. I don't know why, maybe because you sat opposite of me, because suddenly I grasped my blade, and when I blinked, I see you there. Dead. After I cut you in half.

"But, hey, I've done that before, right? You'll comeback anyway. So I carried on the plan for that day. I continued to eat my breakfast, I watered the plants in our little garden, I went to visit the fountain, spared with Zilong. I even bought groceries, and you know I don't like that. I did all of that, alone, because I killed you. I didn't even think for a second about it. Because I've killed you so many times in the game before, and you always comeback. You'll never stay dead for long, because you're strong, I know that.

"But in my dream, you never cameback. Because in my dream, we no longer lived in this sick game that made us kill each other without being dead for too long. There was no mad king that cursed that place so we will always come to live after being killed there. There was no people that cheers on us every time we kill each others and taking bet when the next game began. There was no laws that bound us to this twisted life punishment. There was no grim reality that we both live in right now.

"And I killed you."

It was not how she envisioned her confession to Alucard ended. Maybe he would just brushed her off or straight up ignoring her. She never thought that he would be saying 'I love you too', which was very unlikely because he never let himself be too close or intimate with anyone. Nor did she thought that he would say something like that neither.

"We'll be just fine, I know it."

She grasped his hand, a little too tight, afraid that he would try to break her hold, afraid that he would go and left behind.

"I'm afraid."

"You have nothing to be afraid of. I'm always here for you. I will always be here for you."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

The bell in the center of the village rang. It was a sunny afternoon. But she saw that there was grey clouds on the edge of her eyes. It was the time for them to play the game again. So they went to the main field where the bell tower stand.

"You guys an item now?!"

She was gone as quick as she she appeared and swang beetwen them. Alucard just sighed, but she knew that he was not bothered by Fanny and her antic as he had a small smile on his lips.

Did he smiled because of Fanny's antic or because of her accusation slash question at them? It made her face heat up at the implication.

Most of the prisoners already gathered around the bell tower, minus some who still strolled without a care despite some guards that glared at them. She spotted Zilong who stood at attention and Chang'e who was sitting on Grock's tower. So they went toward them.

"Hi."

"Alucard! Miya!" Chang'e called excitedly.

"There's new people, you know. They came this morning. There!"

True to her words, there was three new prisoner standing near the bell tower. A mage, if her distinctive aura was any clues. The other one is a man with little monkey on his shoulder, both of them have a weapon ready at their disposal. The third is a creature that looked like a living tree. She hoped they were guilty prisoners. Better fought againts prisoners who deserved to be here, as they were guilty to be here, than to fought againts an innocents ones.

Bruno and Lolita was the only people who dared to approched them, because they were nice like that. While some other prisoners assessing them for their strenght, their weakness, their character, just to see wether they would be friends or foes.

She wished that they did not get called today.

But they did. The guard called ten prisoners to play the game. The draw back of their high win rates was that they got to play the game more often than the others, because every body loved a good and hard game.

Soon, they would stand opposite of each other, raised their weapons to the one person that they loved.

"Good luck, Sis!" Chang'e said with too much enthusiasm for a child that had been killed many times and got to live again in a horror world. "You too, Dracula!"

Alucard glared when he heard that. That ridiculous nickname of the man that she loved really brought a gigle out of her lips. Zilong's little sister was really something else.

"As a role model, you don't want to scold her or something, Zi?"

"What?" Zilong turned to look at Miya after he heard him. "Did I heard it right? Did the almighty Alucard really seek my help because a little child mocked him?"

And they laughed when Alucard rolled his eyes and walked away from them, toward the portal near the tower that would transport them to the game's battle field. It was enough to make her mind shied away from the dark tought that might occurred if Chang'e and Zilong never said that. It was just a game anyway. A horrible living hell hole for some and an amusement park for the others. Of a mad king and a little prince. The place where she met him for the first time.

"I need to go. See you later."

So she jogged after Alucard. She brushed her fingers againts his, unsure if it was alright to do that in the presence of many people, afraid that he would jerked his hand away. And once again he surprised her.

He grasped her hand, held her tightly, and whispered to her.

"I love you too."

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AN: Hello! Here is my take on the MLBB fandom. Hopefully there will be many more story from this AU. Thank you for reading! Have a nice day!

#mlbb #mobilelegendsbangbang


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